Sunday, May 13, 2012

Encouraged by the surprise success sales of G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl and G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King along with the blockbuster movie Clash of the Giants, Gygax calls the staff of TSR into his office.

From now on AD&D is going to be about fighting Giants.

For the next two years a flurry of adventures was released. All of them about fighting giants including the classic Under The Storm Giant's Castle. Greyhawk was shelved in favor of a new setting which had as it's centerpiece a war against the giants. Unearthed Giants was quickly written and released giving new classes and new races revolving around fighting Giants.

However what seemed like a surefire way to capitalize on D&D's popularity and the excitement over the new Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was it death knell. Within two years of it's release, sales plummeted as gamers tired of fighting giants all the time and flocked other games like Chaosium's Runequest and SPI's newly released Dragonquest. There is growing excitement over Palladium Fantasy as many say it restores the wide ranging fantasy enjoyed by fans of original Dungeon & Dragons. Now a 2nd Edition of AD&D is has been announced that promises to be a toolkit to allow referees to create any fantasy setting they desire. TSR is quick to note that fans of the Giant Wars will still find support in the 2nd Edition.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.